Poetry Friday - where we are

By the time this posts (automatically, I hope), I will be in the United States (if all goes according to plan as, so often, it doesn't). I was thinking about this poem today (I'm writing this on Tuesday). I thought about it so much that I actually had to go over to school and get Good Poems, the anthology where I knew I had read it. Once I found the title and poet, I realized it was available online, but I couldn't remember enough of the details of it to find it without the book.

I do live in two places (I posted some more about that here) and I like the perspective of this poem on that phenomenon. As Locklin says, "i have always loved both the freshness of arriving and the relief of leaving."

Here's the beginning of the poem:


where we are

Gerald Locklin

(for edward field)

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what
is wrong is the result of where you are.


You can read the rest of this poem here.

Here's today's Poetry Friday roundup.